Weaving a Web for Change: Collaboration at the Vancity SEWF Pre-Event

In the social enterprise community and beyond, great opportunity lies in collaboration and recognizing places for interconnectivity. With this in mind, Vancity Credit Union (Vancity) and a diverse group of local social enterprises came together on September 11 for a Social Enterprise World Forum (SEWF) Pre-Event. With a room full of social entrepreneurs as well as staff from Vancity and the Vancity Community Foundation, conversations were buzzing and excitement for Calgary was in the air. 

Sharing stories of our social enterprises’ best failures was an awesome ice-breaker, allowing us to learn from each other, while setting a tone for the evening based on mutual trust and understanding. For the remainder of the evening, we delved into discussion around our goals for the Social Enterprise World Forum and the challenges we hope to address through learnings gained in Calgary. From these discussions, three major themes emerged that we all felt are relevant to the future development of our enterprises: mechanics or the business building blocks of social enterprise, growth, and collaboration.

 Mechanics

Many social enterprises struggle to balance their mission and model with the business objective of building sufficient markets to sustain them financially. As a group, we hope that SEWF will be a vehicle for us to share experiences and better understand the mechanics and components needed for building a robust, resilient social enterprise. 

Understanding those building blocks and getting them right are key to any successful business, but social enterprises face an added layer of complexity. These complexities run the gamut, from defining human resource practices and what that means for hiring, to training and safety –  while balancing a mandate to hire those with barriers to employment (just to name a few).  And what about monitoring margins while having to pay a premium for green products (to further our environmental mandate) while at the same time remaining price conscious and attracting our target market?

There are no easy answers, and that’s why a conference like SEWF will play a valuable role in providing space for social enterprises to share their experiences. 

Growth

Growth remains an ever-prominent topic of discussion for many social enterprises. When should we expand? Should we expand at all? What would it mean for our enterprise? Is there a large enough market to service? Can we afford to grow? So many questions arise when trying to wrap our heads around growth and expansion.

The ultimate goals of any enterprise, both for-profit and not-for-profit, are to be financially successful and invest back into the enterprise’s mission. The challenge here lies within achieving growth without destabilizing our entire enterprises. Time after time we hear stories of enterprises that get a ‘big break’ like winning a large contract, but fail to manage the enormous demands associated. 

But it doesn’t end there. Once we decide that expansion is the right path for our enterprise, how do we finance it? What are our options? And once again, how do we maintain the equilibrium between social mandate and business objectives? We are eager to hear how other enterprises have approached growth; we want to learn from the experience of others and share our own experiences, so that all our social enterprises are sustainable and resilient.

Collaboration

With synergy, the sum of all parts is greater than each individual part alone. The themes of synergy, collaboration and reciprocity crept into just about every conversation at the Vancity-hosted pre-event. In fact, perhaps greater than all the dynamic speakers, compelling topics and practical advice that we are sure SEWF will provide, it is the opportunity to connect and build relationships that we are eagerly anticipating . A conference such as this allows for dialogue, sharing and openness which creates a sense of trust and belonging. It’s through the sharing of experiences that we learn more wholeheartedly of the power of collaboration.

After the conference, we hope to continue this collaboration – 

We envision sharing these learnings and experiences and cultivating newfound relationships to better support our enterprises and social mandates. By leveraging our collective power, we can create an exponentially positive effect in the communities we serve.

But how do we bring back the learning from our experiences in Calgary and keep these lessons alive? And how do we continue to share these learnings in a meaningful way?

Identifying opportunities for creating interconnections between our social enterprises is one way to keep this momentum going. We will use these synergies to work together towards shared goals, and support each other through a collaborative lens. What kind of parallel projects can we work on together? How can we leverage our respective skills and expertise to support each other through purchasing relationships or initiatives addressing a common mission? The Social Enterprise World Forum will provide a platform to begin these discussions and piece together opportunities for collaboration, with the end goal of creating an enabling environment for social enterprises to develop and flourish. We look forward to collaborating with you in Calgary!